One aspect of the Internet communication which has grown significantly of late is web-logs (commonly referred to as “blogs”). Generally, blogs are personal Web sites that contain dated entries in reverse chronological order (most recent first) about a particular topic. Blogs generally function as a journal for one person or a group of contributors. Entries contain the dated entries of the owner or owning entity, commentary by a group, or the public in general, as well as multimedia content and links to other Web sites.
Many blog sites offer an RSS or ATOM syndication feed that provides headlines of their latest entries along with URLs to the content. Hence, blogs can be read in a simple Web-browsing application, or via a feed-reader application.
Many blog applications publish what is known as a “blogroll” on the front page of a blog. A blog roll is literally a list of the blogs that the blog owner reads. For example, on a personal blog, one blogger may have on his blogroll the list of his friend's blog. The blogroll is generally stored in a set of code which can be accessed programmatically, but may be stored in any format.
While some blogs invite feedback and comments from visitors, others are maintained by the discretion of the controlling entity, and can only be read by “authorized parties”. An authorization process is used by the controlling entity to establish a trust relationship to allow other entities access to the private portions of the blog.